Worth It

Italy is the most beautiful place. Traveling was pretty easy and cheap, as was staying in hostels. A plane ride to Paris only cost me 14 euro with Ryanair.com, and most hostels were less than 20 euros per night. The academic side wasn't great though. It was much more work than I expected, without learning a lot from it. I did learn a lot of Italian but my class was extremely stressful. I got better at Italian by hanging out with the locals, but there isn't really a great social scene that suited my interests. In Siena there are a few bars, but not really dance clubs or party opportunities. I was very surprised to learn that Italians don't really drink. They may have a glass of wine, but rarely do they get any sort of drunk. The contrada parties are so fun though! Lots of dancing. CET has a great set-up with a group of Italians from the University of Siena - we got drinks (aperitivo) with them every week. It was my favorite part of Siena; I made some great Italian friends. Most of my dislikes stemmed from not getting along very well with the students in my program, but by the end, we were great friends, and everything was smoothed over. The food is INCREDIBLE. I ate everything in sight and still lost five pounds because the food is so organic and well-made (compared to American preservatives). Going to soccer games was very fun too. Italians are SO into it! Siena is very small: within the walls it's about a 30 minute walk from one side to the other. It's also very safe. No one had any trouble with pickpocketing or any theft. The housing was great - I had my own room and an Italian flatmate. Overall, though I wasn't very happy for most of it (it's really hard feeling lonely or depressed in a foreign country), it ended up being a really great, life-changing experience. If I'm being SUPER honest though, while I think studying abroad in general is very important, I may have chosen a different program (maybe even a different country) that was bigger and better suited to my personal needs.